VINCENT SIMON
During ACROBATS Israel Horovitz revisits a marital relationship on the verge of breaking up, similar to Strindberg's 'Dance of Death', or Albee in 'Who Is Afraid of Virginia Wolf?' A universal theme treated with Horovitz's taste for the absurd. Not only is the married couple fighting for independence but also they are doing so during their acrobatic number that relies entirely on dependency.

Again some liberties were taken to make it work here and now! And when I first read the play, in Australia last year, I immediately thought of my friend Fiona Jurd an amazing actress and dancer who happens to be a Grand Champion Girl of Physical Culture. She won this title five times at the Opera House. And From Physical Culture to ballroom dancing there are only few tango steps; that's why we decided to make this couple of acrobats a typical Australian couple of ballroom dancers, but a very 'acrobatic' one!
Fiona is joined on stage by her real life partner, NIDA graduate Russell Smith, who also happens to be a great dancer!

Together they choreographed their own routine under my directions and the excellent suggestions of Mel Smith who also choreographed The Line.

It is a great curtain raiser for The Line as spectators will be set in this strange and intense absurdist world that Horovitz created.

I discovered THE LINE, in its French version: "Le Premier" (literally translated as 'the first') in Avignon Theatre Festival (a huge summer festival in France comparable to Edinburg) in 1994. I was then a member of "Les foux de la rampe" a Parisian theatre company to which I proposed to produce that hilarious play.

We started to rehearse it and had even booked a venue for it when we found out that the French rights for the play had already been given to another company in Paris. One cannot produce the same play within a 100km radius in France!

In that production I was playing Arnall the wimpy husband and I was also helping with the direction. I learnt later that the company who had the rights in Paris, Hercub Theatre was actually a company with which Israel Horovitz had created strong links and to whom he gave full power to adapt other of his plays in French.

Israel Horovitz is America’s most produced playwright in France. In French Theatre history, no other American has had more play translated and produced in the French language. Eugene O’Neil comes just behind. The Line is therefore a personal unfinished business that I have always dreamt of directing.

The Line is a "fast and furious" type of play where actors and spectators should end up breathless! Suspense and humour is one of the most difficult cocktails to create on stage but it is also the most rewarding! When I first saw "The Line" I was exalted. I went back the day after and finally saw it four times (including another Parisian version)!

That’s also why I am quite glad to have gathered this cast which is a group of actors who worked and trained together and which will have this "ensemble" spirit so important for the play.

Even though the play is a typical American/ New York play I have decided to make it Sydney, Australia. First as personal and political statement. Being French of course it is very difficult for me to learn accents… but quite frankly the whole American domination in every level of Australian society and even in the arts (especially with the recent events of free trade agreement) really annoys me. I have seen many plays, and even with established actors, where even I could tell some accents sounded very phony. And if an American company produces a Moliere play, will they use a French accent?

I think it’s time to push the boundaries and listen to people’s natural voices. Secondly the characters and the situation that Israel Horovitz wrote 30 years ago for a New York audience are very Sydney today. And let’s face it, Sydney is quite an "achiever" type of town! I’ve heard people using the terms shallow, superficial, career orientated, or as we say in French "arrivist". Sydney wants to maintain its status of number one in Australia.

Australians boasts themselves of fabulous sport performances, Sport the number one entertainment industry in Australia (to the detriment of theatre of course…)
And what is the most competitive activity of all? Sport!

So I think there are quite a lot of people who will be able to identify to the constant taste for over achievement and reward of coming first. Ever since I arrived in Australia I noticed two cultural and economical facts that Australian people seem to be very good at matching together when they seem totally opposite: the tall poppy syndrome and the invasion of an all-American culture (whether it is artistic political or economical).

It’s a bit like that dreadful ad on TV for some constipation medicine (yes, I know my references are very deep…) where it says at the end: "I always wanted to be normal, but now I know there is a better kind of normal!" It basically says that we want to strive but only to be normal, we want to be first because it’s normal to be first, we want to be first just like every body else: and that’s what happens to the characters in the play.

Finally this play is just an hour of pure delirium that always makes me laugh. So let’s not forget to smile!

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ISRAEL HOROVITZ
Israel Horovitz has written fifty play's over the course of his career, which have been translated into 20 different languages. He is best known for The Indian Wants the Bronx, which introduced Al Pacino. Mr. Horovitz has written Line, which introduced Richard Dreyfus, It's Called The Sugar Plum, with Marsha Mason and Jill Clayfaurgh, Rats, and Morning. The Wokefield Ploys are a seven play cycle that includes Hopscotch, The 75th,
Alfred the Great, Our Father's Failing, Alfred Dies, Stage Directiffns, and Spared. His short comedy Faith was seen off-Broadway, in the Horovitz-McNally-Melfi reunion triptych Faith, Hope and Charity. As Artistic Director and Producer at The Gloucester Stage, Mr. Horovitz premLered Your Car in ffummi It moved to Broadway's 1991-92 season with Jason Rewards aad Judith lvey. Sunday Runmers In The Rain previewed at Gloucester and played at Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Horovitz is also Founder and Artistic Director of the New York Playwrights Lab. In the past few years, Horovitz has written several screenplays including The Deuce ( a/k/a The Gloucester Water front) for Sony Pictures; Payofski 's Discovery for Warner Brothers; The Pan for M-G-M; Aster Hair for Universal Pictures, The {Wet Room for Paramoirnt Pictures; The Strong Man for Tri-Star; and Letters iff Iris. Mr. Horovite is a winner of 2 OBIE Awards, an Emmy, the Prix du Plaisir de Theatre (for Line in Paris) Prix du Jury (Cannes Film Festival), The New York Drama Desk Award, the Los Angeles Critics Prize, an Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Eliott Norton Prize. Israel Horovifa is America's most produced living playwright in Francs; only Eugene O'Neil had more plays translated and produced in the French language.

An internationally acclaimed playwright, actor and screenwriter, Israel Horovitz makes his screen directing debut with an adaptation of his intense and moving monologue 3 WEEKS AFTER PARADISE. His screenwriting credits include: JAMES DEAN (2001) directed by Mark Rydell, SUNSHINE (1999) directed by Istvan Szabo, AUTHOR! AUTHOR! (1982) directed by Arthur Hiller and the cult classic THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT (1970).

Among Horovitz's best-known plays are LINE (now in its 25th year, off-Broadway), THE INDIAN WANTS THE BRONX (with Al Pacino), IT'S CALLED THE SUGAR PLUM (with Marsha Mason and Jill Clayburgh), THE PRIMARY ENGLISH CLASS (with Diane Keaton), TODAY, I AM A FOUNTAIN PEN, A ROSEN BY ANY OTHER NAME, THE CHOPIN PLAYOFFS, PARK YOUR CAR IN HARVARD YARD (with Jason Robards aod Judith lvey), NORTH SHORE FISH, STRONG-MAN'S WEAK CHILD, and LEBENSRAUM. Israel also performed in one of Gigantic Pictures first productions, an adaptation of Bernard Malamutfs The Fh-xt Seven Iecu's'.

Among his numerous awards are the OBIE (twice), EMMY, Prix de Plaisir dn Theatre, Prix du Jury - Cannes Film Festival, Drama Desk Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from B'Nai Brith.

Israel Horovitz's "Line" 'has been running—-with various casts guided by different directors—for 25 years at the 13th Street Rep. That makes it the longest running off-off Broadway show currently on the boards. Having recently undergone yet another rejuvenation with fresh performers under Edith O'Hara's direction, this production aptly
demonstrates why the play has enjoyed such an extended, continuous run.

Horovilz's play elegantly employs the natural tension that conies from a familiar human activity to unleash the deeper resentments, insecurities and foibles common to the hearts of men. The dramatic action of "Line" is simple: Five characters (four men, one woman) fight each other as they compete for the coveted place of "front of the line." Horovitz wisely never specifies where the line is going or what they are waiting for, lending the scenario an universal if absurdist twist. Amid escalating hostilities, the characters try to
usurp the leader's position using their cunning, wit and sexual savoir-faire against one another.

Central to the plot is the one woman's repeated seduction of three of the male characters before her final bored, patronizing submission to her lawfully-wedded mate. How the characters allow themselves to be carted off for a romp in the hay combined with the tenacity with which they fight for first place is like a catalogue of coping mechanisms,
Fleming —a guy who has camped out to insure his place in line—has his chance? diminished by his courteous admiration for authority and order. Steven, the young vain Mozart aficionado, has an ability to lead and a propensity to destroy. Dolan projects a tough guy exterior to mask his need to submit. Molly hides her weakness for the beauty of youth behind her sexual prowess and her cruelty. And Amall enacts his neuroses and his social phobias in his doomed attempts to reclaim his wife as his own.